Mastercard today announced the expansion of its First-Party Trust program across Europe, to address the growing trend in first-party fraud, often referred to as ‘friendly’ fraud. This occurs when a cardholder disputes a legitimate purchase, either intentionally or because they do not recognize the transaction on their statement.
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Global chargeback volume is predicted to reach 324 million transactions in 2028, a double-digit increase over the 2025 forecast of 261 million1. As digital commerce continues to grow across Europe, merchants and issuers face increasing pressure to manage disputes efficiently while accurately distinguishing genuine fraud from legitimate purchases.
Mastercard’s First-Party Trust program is designed to support this effort by increasing transaction transparency, through risk model-driven insights to inform authorization decisioning and merchant-provided evidence to assist issuers in reviewing disputed transactions. European issuers will be able to make more informed dispute decisions by more accurately distinguishing third-party fraud from first-party fraud.
How It Works
The First-Party Trust program aims to create greater transaction transparency between issuers and merchants, by giving merchants, including small businesses, the opportunity to submit pertinent insights to counter first-party fraud.
Mastercard provides two paths for the sharing of these enhanced insights between a merchant and card issuer. Merchants can send the insights directly as part of the transaction, or they can do so as part of the disputes process. The program enhances the resolution of such disputes by providing:
• First Party Trust insights in authorization, powered by Mastercard fraud models, to help issuers separate third-party fraud, where someone's card details are used without their consent, from first-party fraud. Issuers get fraud-risk signals that point to likely third-party fraud and flag the transactions with the highest levels of trust;
• Merchant-provided evidence that supports issuers assess the legitimacy of a disputed transaction, including information associated with the purchase, delivery, and authentication of the transaction, where available and appropriate;
• New rules defining compelling evidence that can support issuers with the review of disputed purchases and reduce unnecessary chargebacks, including merchant chargeback protection for disputes that meet First-Party Trust evidence sharing requirements.
Michele Centemero, Executive Vice President, Services Europe, at Mastercard says: “As digital commerce continues to grow, building trust across the ecosystem has never been more important. By helping merchants and issuers access relevant transaction information needed to review disputed purchases, we can reduce unnecessary disputes while strengthening confidence across the payments ecosystem.”
First-Party Trust is a global program that launched in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, and across the Asia Pacific region in 2024. It will become available in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa in October 2026, and across Europe in July 2027.